The post gives credit to Paul Fung, who took over the dailies for years. But no mention is made of Vern Greene’s work on the Sundays. Sterrett handed off almost all his work for a while. When Fung started on the dailies, Greene did on the Sundays. I rather discount the account of Fung doing the Sunday page (except, perhaps, briefly) or that Sterrett “supervised the Sunday pages personally, with Fung simply providing the background detail repeated from panel to panel.”

The strips’s characters look different, in the late ’30s, from both Fung and recent Sterrett. On top of ll that opinion, I knew Vern Greene when I was a kid; he had a stack of his Polly originals, he shared these details… in fact, to the point of re-creating the thick-and-thin lines of Sterrett’s great style, and such things.

As King bullpen artists, they eventually moved on to other work, Fung on Blondie (mostly the comic books and merchandising art), Vern eventually drawing a superhero strip for the Ledger Syndicate. He reture=ned to King to do the daily Bringing Up Father in ’54 (Frank Fletcher doing the Sunday page — Vern could never get a full gig).

Sterrett’s assistant before his illness was a guy named Johnny Kovalcik, not sure of the spelling. Sterrett liked him; was the heir apparent. But it seems he froze when he was given the opportunity to solo. He even left the KFS bullpen. This story came by way og Jim Raymond, Alex’s brother. When he was brought in to ghost Blondie (the Sundays at first) after Chic Young lost his young son, King Features president Joe Connolly warned him: “Don’t pull a Kovalcik on us!!!”

At the end, arthritis notwithstanding, Sterrett returned to POLLY. It was a Sunday-only strip by then; he could take more time. But he likely was unable to afford a ghost then. POLLY ended in a small list of papers.

Rick Marschall